Back to the Beginning

I’ve scrapped the initial 37,000 words of Sherlock Holmes in Fantasy Land.

In a word: YIKES.

Scrapping work is never easy, especially something that’s gotten so long. It’s not something I do, ever, really. If something isn’t working in a first draft I just keep pushing–that’s what the first draft is there for. This time, though, I managed to get so mired in something that’s not working that the project ended up just sitting there.

I left it to work on other things. I wrote short stories, I edited another book, I had plenty of other projects, but I always wanted to go back to working on the Fantasy-Sherlock book. Dilemma.

So, I’ve scrapped it. Too much time had passed and even when I tried to push ahead, I wasn’t in the right mindset to continue with the first draft again. I’m back at the beginning now, I’m plotting and taking notes! There are things taped on the wall so soon enough the office where I write will most likely start to look like the rooms you see in crime TV where people plaster FACTS and FIGURES all over the place. All I need are some newspaper clippings!

As scary as it is, it feels good to be back at the beginning. I’ve worked out most of the problems I was having and I feel like I finally have a solid basis for moving forward, which was 90% of the problem with the OLD first draft. It’s very, very hard for me to write a “mystery” style plot when I’m discovering the plot as I write it, so I’ve abandoned that approach for something a little more structured.

A little finger crossing wouldn’t hurt as an accompaniment to all the planning, though…